4. The Puppeteer: Poison Vials

Year: 2013/2014
Source: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag multiplayer
Conventions attended: Armageddon 2013, EB Expo 2013, Supanova (Melbourne & Sydney) 2014
Awards: Placed 2-5th in Ubisoft's E3 Fan Video Contest - Cosplay Category 2014

Let me just state that I had never worked with resin or casting of any kind until this point. The Puppeteer's vials have a very unique shape and I spent hours searching eBay, Etsy and other places for similar vials. The closest I could find were vintage perfume bottles which A) were rather expensive and B) glass. I wasn't particularly fond of the idea of having glass bottles strapped to my thigh just in case they broke.

Clear casting the vials. The lids were cast separately from the bodies.

I used an epoxy clear cast resin mixed with a red dye. The vials were made up of three parts: the inner red "liquid", the clear "bottle" and the lid. I cast the red sections which were slightly smaller than the final vial dimensions. Once they had cured, I suspended them in the bigger mould and poured clear resin around it (the moulds with the paddlepop sticks in the photo). Once those had partially cured, I sat the lids on to and poured a little bit more clear resin in. As you can imagine, they are quite weighty, but I didn't mind that too much. The vials on the thigh holster needed constant adjustment though because it kept falling down...

As you can see, they're a little wonky and because the original sculpts weren't perfectly smooth, the casts came out with surface ridges. 

After a lot of brainstorming and researching, I tried wet sanding the vials with not much improvement. I eventually found a Youtube video of someone using Krylon's Triple Thick Glaze Spray to clear up a scratched resin tile. So I bought some at Bunnings and tested it. It worked!

I spray painted the thigh vial lids with silver spray paint and another coat of a clear acrylic spray.

2017 edit: This clear cast epoxy resin will eventually turn yellow in sunlight/UV. They're also now stuck in the leather holsters because the heat from the sun/body may have melted the Triple Thick Glaze slightly over time... Oh well.